Author: Mathe

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Using Technology to Bring About Social Change

In my last post (over a month ago), I was more or less using photography for inspiration. I am not a photographer. However, I am a habitant of the technology world (but neither a geek or a technophile) and as such, I have a duty to advocate for the use of technology in bringing about social change. Today, by some fluke, I came across a blog on “How to Use Social Media for Social Change“. This blog moved me in almost the same way the photograph by James Nachtwey moved me. When I saw that photograph, one of my first impressions was: ‘something needs to be done; the man is practically walking next to his own shadow but in fact he is himself a shadow of his former self because of HIV/Aids’.

I derailed a bit, the point is, we members of the tech community need to rise to the call! We need to do something to bring about social change. We have a responsility to ensure that people don’t die due to HIV/Aids; lack of clean water and sanitation; hunger; etc.

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Corridor of Death

A picture is said to say a thousand words. Below is a picture that resonates so much with what we would like to prevent – people moving into the corridor of death by Aids. This picture was taken by a renowned photojournalist and war photographer, James Nachtwey, just two days before the man met his fate. Looking at it from this context, I hope it is easy to see why the words “corridor of death” are associated with the picture. Further, I hope that this piece of fine art evokes enough emotion to cause each one of us to participate in the fight against HIV/Aids.

James Nachtwey's work


 

For true admiration of the original work visit James Nachtwey’s gallery .

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Consumer Health Informatics

As alluded to in my previous blog, my interest in the healthcare information systems module was biased towards use of ICTs to benefit consumers and not the healthcare professionals. As it turns out, my area of interest is aptly called “Consumer Health Informatics“. According to Gunther Eysenbach , consumer health informatics can be defined as:

“…the branch of medical informatics that analyses consumers’ needs for information; studies and implements methods of making information accessible to consumers; and models and integrates consumers’ preferences into medical information systems. Consumer informatics stands at the crossroads of other disciplines, such as nursing informatics, public health, health promotion, health education, library science, and communication science, and is perhaps the most challenging and rapidly expanding field in medical informatics; it is paving the way for health care in the information age.”

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Healthcare Information Systems

In the last week of the first term, I attended a module on Healthcare Information Systems. The broad objectives of the module was to address how ICTs can be used in the health sector to improve the delivery of health services. In the delivery of the module, there was a strong focus on design and implementation of systems used by health professionals. The systems discussed included e-prescriptions and electronic patient records.

However, my interest in module was mainly on how ICTs are used for empowering patients and/or citizens in order to keep them healthy. In light of this, I will just discuss things that were of particular interest to me-mostly in a point form format.

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